Mental health tour 2019- Breaking The Stigma

“You should give them a big hug to make them feel better” – wise words of advice from a year 1 student at Filton Avenue School.

This years mental health tour is my first work for Unique Voice, and this first week has been brilliant! As a team, we’ve managed to engage young people from all sorts of backgrounds in a performance and discussion about their mental health (which definitely wasn’t mentioned in my school days!) Across all year groups, we’ve been able to teach new strategies for handling emotions, and get them to come up with their own ideas too! One of my favourite suggestions from them was to play a board game at home next time they felt sad or lonely.

Every child is different and they all come in with a greater or lesser understanding of emotions and what to do with them, but the positive response we’ve had is a good sign that they’ve all learned something from us. We hope to leave them with a little more confidence in expressing their feelings.

I’ve been really impressed by how involved the students have been in our Q&A sessions, especially when we’ve won over those who were unenthusiastic when they walked into the hall at first! With something as universally important as mental health, I believe it’s essential to deliver the information in a way that’s accessible to everyone- regardless of their level of achievement in other areas of education. Whether your a top grade student, or someone who really struggles, our message is that we all have feelings, and we all have a responsibility to take care of them.